SPARTA - 2000

Sparta. Oraias Elenis Street (Ch. Giatra property). A. Themos (Ε' ΕΠΚΑ) reports the excavation of a fourth- to fifth-century AD building, part of which may have been a workshop (Fig. 1: site 13; Figs 2-3). This is a continuation of the complex found in 1993 on the neighbouring Katsou plot to the south.

In its first phase, the building consisted of two rooms with separate entrances, with walls of unworked stone, tile and mud (plaster was rarely used). Another building of this phase can be traced beneath later walls. To a later general phase of rebuilding belongs a well in the south of the plot which cuts through earlier structures. After the abandonment of the complex, two tombs were dug in room III − a Late Roman to Early Christian tile grave and a cist (including marble in secondary usage) containing two burials, the latter with an Early Christian lekythos.

Late Roman to Early Christian pottery collected includes ARS plates and North African lamps, one-handled cups, an almost intact amphora, an inscribed Roman lamp and part of a pointed amphora. Small finds include iron nails, parts of bone pins and a needle, a glass bead, two bronze stirrers, fragments of glass vessels, part of a miniature bronze bell, a bronze figurine of Hermes (Fig. 4) and four fragments of stone inscriptions (of which M13856 is a part of Diocletian’s Edict on Maximum Prices). One hundred and twenty three bronze coins were collected, most of them fourth-century AD.